Driving down the cost of your car hire with car hire excess insurance

Stand-alone car hire excess insurance, providing you with an alternative to costly excess waivers from car hire companies.
Which Best Buy Car Hire Excess Insurance September 2024
Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award 2024
Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award 2024
Single Trip
From £2.15 a day*
* Price shown applies to cover in UK & Europe
Get a
quote
Annual Cover
From £47.30*
* Price shown applies to cover in UK & Europe
Get a
quote
Van Cover
From £4.86 a day*
* Price shown applies to cover in the UK
Get a
quote
EU Residents
Visit our EU website Cover4Rentals
Get a
quote
Which Best Buy Car Hire Excess Insurance September 2024
Named a ‘Best Buy’ Insurer By Which?
As seen in: The logo of the Guardian newspaper, who featured our car hire excess insurance policies in several articles The logo of the publication Money, who featured ReduceMyExcess reimbursement insurance for car hire policies in their articles The logo of Channel 4 who included us and our hire car excess insurance in one of their programs The logo for This Is Money, who detailed the benefits of taking out a car hire excess insurance policy from ReduceMyExcess The logo of the Telegraph newspaper who featured ReduceMyExcess and our excess insurance for car hire product The logo of the Times newspaper, who included us in articles around hiring a car and saving money with car hire excess insurance The logo of the Express newspaper

What is Car Hire Excess Insurance?

Car hire excess insurance is a lot less scary than it sounds and if you ever have to hire a car, it could save you £100’s if not £1000’s in the process. At its most basic level, our car hire excess insurance (a Which? Best Buy) is an insurance policy that you take out which allows you to be reimbursed the amount of excess you have had to pay to a car hire company if you accidentally damage your hire car.

Generally in the car hire industry, UK and European car hire agreements will usually automatically include CDW (Collision Damage Waiver), theft and third-party liability. This means that if you end up damaging the vehicle, or causing damage to something else, you only need to pay out up to the excess limit, and the car hire companies own insurance will cover the remainder. However, the excess alone can still amount to £1,000 or more.

With a policy from ReduceMyExcess we’ll reimburse the excess you’ve had to pay once you’ve claimed through us, meaning you shouldn’t have to pay a penny in excess at all.

Do I Need Hire Car Excess Insurance?

Car hire excess insurance isn’t mandatory, it’s not like car insurance and it isn’t a legal requirement when you hire a car.

Having said that, what car hire excess insurance does give you is protection and peace-of-mind that should you cause any accidental damage to your hire car you can claim through us and not let it ruin your holiday.

What does car hire excess insurance cover?

No excess

We will reimburse the full amount deducted from your card by the car rental company for damage to the car, up to the limit on your policy.

Worldwide

You have a choice of either UK & Europe cover or Worldwide cover.

Annual or daily

We offer short term cover for a one-off trip or an annual cover for multiple trips.

High excess limit

Standard cover limit of up to £10,000 for excess reimbursement (including admin fees) and up to £1,000 for towing costs.

Tyres, windscreen & undercarriage

The cover includes damage to the tyres, windscreen, all auto glass, undercarriage, misfuelling and towing costs of the rental vehicle.

Family Cover (Optional)

Include up to 4 close family members who live with you permanently, they will benefit from the same level of cover when renting a car (only applies to Annual Cover)

Additional Drivers

Up to 8 additional drivers named on the car rental agreement are covered automatically provided they are between 21-84 years of age and hold a valid driving licence.

CDW (Optional)

Choose the Worldwide+ cover to include $50,000 increased excess reimbursement cover in USA and Canada

Personal Possessions

We include up to £300 of cover for your personal possessions stolen from your rental vehicle

Looking for van hire excess cover? Click here to learn about our van cover

How Does Car Hire Excess Insurance Work?

1. AT THE CAR HIRE DESK, YOU ARE OFFERED EXCESS WAIVER YOU SAY: “THANKS, BUT NO THANKS!”

2. THEY PRE-AUTHORISE YOUR CREDIT CARD FOR THE VALUE OF THE EXCESS

3. COLLECT YOUR CAR NOTING ALL EXISTING DAMAGE ON THE FORM AND TAKE PICTURES OF ANY DAMAGE.

4. ENJOY YOUR TRIP KNOWING YOU’VE PAID A GREAT PRICE TO COVER YOUR EXCESS.

5. RETURN THE CAR CHECKING IT OVER WITH THE REP WHO WILL THEN CONFIRM IF THERE IS ANY EXCESS TO PAY.

6. IF THERE IS NEW DAMAGE YOU PAY UP TO YOUR EXCESS AND GET A RECEIPT.

7. LEAVE THE DESK HAPPY KNOWING THAT YOUR ReduceMyExcess WILL REIMBURSE THE EXCESS CHARGE.

8. COMPLETE OUR CLAIMS FORM AND SUBMIT

Why Choose ReduceMyExcess?

Get insured instantly

We’ll email you your documents within seconds, and that’s it, you’re all set for your trip

Underwritten by AIG

With 100 years of experience, American International Group, Inc is a leading global insurance organisation serving customers in 80+ countries. American International Group UK Ltd is a member of the AIG group.

PLATINUM TRUSTED

Our brand has a strong reputation. We listen to our customers feedback and constantly work on improving service.

Who Are We?

With over a decade’s worth of experience in the industry, here at ReduceMyExcess we pride ourselves on providing a low-cost alternative to expensive excess waivers offered to you by car hire companies.

Our goal is to consistently put our customers first and provide the best possible service we can, whilst constantly finding new ways to help you save money of car hire excess. We even hold a coveted Platinum Trusted Service Award from Feefo signifying our continued outstanding reviews from our customers over the years.

Our policies are underwritten by globally renowned insurers AIG who recently won “Outstanding Insurer of the Year” at the LifeSearch awards and operate in over 80 countries globally, so you know you’ll be in excellent hands.

What Types of Cover Are There?

We offer two main types of policies:

Our single trip policy (as its name suggests), is best for people planning a single trip away. Our annual cover is more suited to people who are going away more than once a year. One big bonus of our annual cover is that it automatically covers up to four family members (including yourself) on your policy, just make sure they’re classed as named drivers on the rental agreement.

Geographically, our cover is also split up into three sections:

Car Hire Excess Insurance Documentation
For the full information regarding our car hire excess products please find the current policy wording and Product information documents below.
Policy Wording
Single-trip Product Information Document
Annual Product Information Document
We are always looking at improving our products as these will change from time to time, to find a historic policy wording or IPID click on our document archive.

How Do I Claim?

Our claims process is simple and comprehensive. We operate a reimbursement scheme which means you should claim through us once you have returned your car to the car hire company and they have charged you for any damage or loss. We’ll pass your claim to our claim handlers who will then look through your claim and decide the amount due back to you.

For all the information about how and when to put a claim in with us, take a look at our claims page where we dive into everything you could possibly want to know.

I Have More Questions...

We’d love to help answer any further question you have. The best place to find what you’re looking for is our FAQs section.

Equally you can head to our contact us page and send our fantastic customer service team a message and they’ll be happy to provide you an answer as soon as they’re able.